Tackling the climate crisis is the most urgent challenge of our time. But doing so is also the best opportunity Canada has ever had to build our next economy, address the affordability crisis, and protect the environment.

This should be the moment we’ve been waiting and working for – to reduce our energy bills, cleanse our air and water, revitalize our towns and cities, honour Indigenous sovereignty, and take back control of our energy systems. But to realize this potential, a new and much more ambitious approach is needed.

That’s why an Avi Lewis-led NDP will champion a Green New Deal to address both our climate and economic crises at once, with bold national solutions that will create over a million good-paying jobs across this country.

For decades, Liberal governments have treated climate change as an inconvenient to-do that never makes it to the top of the action list, while Conservatives have outright refused to acknowledge the reality we are all faced with.

Today, we’re living with their results. Canada is warming at nearly twice the global average. Drought, heat domes, wildfires, flooding and heat waves are our terrifying new reality. We’ve fallen far behind other G7 countries in investments in renewables. In a single year (2021) climate-driven disasters like wildfires and the BC heat dome cost $17 billion.

It’s time for a change. Poll after poll shows that Canadians are worried about climate change and affordability, and want the government to act. A Green New Deal is about offering solutions that meet the scale of our economic and climate crises. We will bring a whole-of-society approach that engages every level of government, and workers from across the country.

The Green New Deal model is inspired by the U.S. New Deal, the wide-reaching economic, social, and political reforms enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt during the 1930’s Great Depression – an era of massive economic inequality, corporate power, social unrest, and lack of good-paying jobs; much like today. Despite its history of segregation and other prejudices of the era, the New Deal put millions of Americans back to work building public works, electrification, conservation and arts projects that still shape the economic and social landscape of America today. It saved the U.S. economy from disaster and was incredibly popular at the ballot box – winning FDR a landslide re-election in 1936.

That’s why an Avi-led NDP will advance a Green New Deal to:

Create a million climate jobs in Canada

A made-in-Canada Green New Deal will create over a million good-paying union jobs in every corner of this country by investing 2% of Canada’s GDP in tackling the climate emergency. We’re talking about a generation of employment for tradesworkers, youth, scientists, fossil fuel workers, and so many more. Here’s how:

A new federal Green Jobs Transfer program

To fund climate resilience and infrastructure projects that would employ hundreds of thousands across the country. The investment would be on the scale of 1% of GDP, and the funding would be front-loaded to protect workers in fossil-fuel reliant provinces first: no one who works in the industry will be left behind. The Green Jobs Transfer program would fund billions in investment in clean energy, building retrofits, green and public transport, and community and nature resilience projects to confront growing climate impacts. Every scale and type of renewable energy will be included.

A massively expanded Youth Climate Corps

To train and employ tens of thousands of young people in meaningful jobs in their communities, while addressing the generational struggle to build a climate-safe economy in Canada. Just like the New Deal’s National Youth Administration, the expanded Youth Climate Corps would train and employ young people to do climate-related work for good pay, making their communities better and helping build the country’s next economy.

A new generation of green public corporations

Federal, provincial, municipal, and Indigenous – to protect Canadian economic sovereignty, lower prices, and hasten our transition off fossil fuels. These new public entities will:

• mass-produce and install electric heat pumps, rooftop and balcony solar and backup batteries;
• support new neighbourhood energy utilities that provide geothermal heating and cooling;
• manufacture electric-battery delivery vans and buses, and farm equipment

These corporations will employ tens of thousands of Canadians, lower prices for needed new technology, revitalize our made-in-Canada economy and make us less vulnerable to U.S. tariffs, and return their public investment to Canadians. It’s part of a green industrial strategy which will create more jobs with every tonne of emissions it eliminates.

Advance climate solutions that make life better and more affordable in Canada

Hours stuck in traffic. Unbearably hot homes in the summer. Closed inter-provincial bus routes. Rising energy bills. Public transit that is too slow, and too expensive.

Enough is enough: an Avi-led NDP would focus on climate solutions that make life in Canada more affordable, more enjoyable, and a whole lot easier to get around. Here’s how:

A revolution in clean transportation

Imagine it: fast, free and reliable public transit in every major Canadian city. Luxurious and affordable high-speed rail that makes flying to neighboring provinces a waste of time and money. A comfortable and reliable electric bus service connecting rural communities and big cities on every Highway of Tears in this land. Public support for e-bikes. And a strengthened zero-emission vehicle mandate, with expanded public charging stations across the country.

A green upgrade for Canadian buildings

Heat pumps for all. Solar panels on our roofs and balconies. And a storage battery for every residence to ensure reliable power, including during outages. New buildings would be connected to the clean energy grid – not fossil fuels – and existing ones retrofitted for energy efficiency, prioritizing lower-income homes first. Unlike multi-billion dollar pipelines that leak, spill and create inter-provincial conflicts, these federal investments are quick to deploy, cost-effective, productivity-enhancing, tariff-proof, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and make life more affordable for households and local businesses. Now that’s a nation-building project we can be proud of.

Powerlines not Pipelines: a true coast-to-coast-to-coast clean energy grid

As we seek to delink our economy from the US, we need provinces to be able to share and export clean energy to each other, before servicing customers across the border. Investing in a true East-West-North energy grid using Canadian steel and other raw materials will revitalize Northern economies dependent on diesel, make energy bills more affordable across the country, create tens of thousands of union jobs, and reduce the number of blackouts and brownouts we face when climate impacts hit. Investing in a clean energy grid will pay big dividends for the climate, our economy, and Canadian independence.

No new fossil fuel infrastructure

While people long to be excited by this positive vision, we also need to tell the truth about what the climate emergency no longer allows. That means straight talk that there will be no federal approvals for new pipelines, offshore oil projects or liquified natural gas terminals.

And because this ambitious energy transition will require new extractive mining of critical minerals in Canada, a Lewis-led NDP will promote an important role for public ownership in this key strategic sector and create a sovereign wealth fund to share the wealth generated from mining with impacted and Indigenous communities, to support them for generations to come.

Protect and restore our air, land, and water

Addressing the climate crisis and transitioning our economy away from fossil fuels requires more than just technological innovation and new infrastructure – we have a big cleanup job ahead.

The Polluter Pay principle requires Canada’s fossil fuel companies to fund the cleanup of their industry’s impacts to our land and water. Under an Avi Lewis NDP, they’ll pay their bills and put tens of thousands to work the process.

At the same time, we cannot stand by while our communities are under direct threat from the ravages of climate change – we need investments in local climate resilience projects to protect us from the climate-fueled storms and fires to come.

A Canadian Green New Deal will protect and restore our air, land and water through:

A National Resilience, Response and Recovery strategy

Championed by municipal leaders so communities can prepare for the climate disasters we know are coming, respond when they hit, and help rebuild afterwards.

A major cleanup of aging and inactive oil and gas wells across the country

Funded by the industry that drilled and profited from them. Following the legal principle of "Polluter Pay", industry-funded cleanups will also begin in communities impacted by mining and oilsands development – creating tens of thousands of jobs, restoring the watershed and putting millions of acres of land back into active use. It’s common sense, and 92% of Albertans support it.

A National Wildfire Response and Prevention plan

For wildfire surveillance, monitoring and national emergency coordination; new firefighting equipment; boosting firefighter pay; and the recruiting and training of new firefighters, with a special focus on Indigenous communities and fire guardians.

Make the oil and gas companies pay

Some of these initiatives will pay for themselves (like new public corporations), while others will cost. So to pay for this bold agenda, we’ll go after the fossil fuel companies that have made extraordinary profits at our collective expense. An Avi-led NDP will push back against Trump’s tariffs with a tax on oil and gas exports to the US, and institute a windfall profits tax to help finance the energy transition and sustainable jobs.

Restore Canada’s global leadership

Under an Avi-led NDP, Canada will honour its international obligations to a global "fair share" of climate financing, understanding that the climate crisis knows no borders, and that wealthier countries like Canada that have contributed disproportionately to the crisis have a special duty to help finance the energy transition in poorer countries and to pay "loss and damages" for climate destruction in the global south. And Canada will join an emerging group of countries and become a signatory to the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty.